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December 24, 2023

Islam and the persuasive power of fear

By Andrea Widburg

Of the three great religions, Jews have been disinterested in converting people; Christ urged his disciples to spread his message through words and good deeds; and Mohamed told his followers to conquer the world with fire and sword. Since October 7, while we’re not seeing fire and sword in the West (yet), we’re certainly seeing standard Islamic efforts to intimidate the West into accepting Islam’s genocidal antisemitism and overall colonialist impulses.

Islam burst out of the Saudi desert in the 7th century A.D. Within one hundred years of Mohamed’s death, its reach had tripled in size, encompassing large parts of the modern Middle East and the northern coast of Africa, while making inroads into Spain. It increased all that territory in the next hundred years. One thousand years after Mohamed’s death, it controlled the entire Middle East, all of North Africa along with a sizable stretch of East Africa, along with large swaths of Central Europe, India, parts of Russia stretching into southern China, and the Malayan peninsula:

Almost none of this happened peacefully. Contrary to the myriad websites purporting to explain Islamic values of persuasion, Islam did not persuade, it conquered. A decade ago, Mike Konrad put together a tally of the death and destruction left in Islam’s wake:

  • 80 million in India
  • 110 million African blacks lost to the Muslim-controlled slave trade
  • 1 million Europeans enslaved or slaughtered
  • Uncounted millions in the Balkans and Southern Italy.
  • Uncounted numbers during the conquest of Malaysia

And that’s just a partial list.

If you’re wondering why I’m bringing up what’s probably a familiar laundry list to our readers, it’s because of this tweet:

Raichick’s question, of course, is rhetorical. We already know what kind of evil maniacs would ruin an event and terrify children: People who use fear as their weapon of “persuasion.” A good example is ISIS burning recalcitrant women alive (although, as readers note, the image on the right is of ISIS burning a Jordanian pilot alive in a cage, not the girls):

The whole COVID panic reminded us that people are very vulnerable to fear. When dealing with Westerners who are used to peace, prosperity, and comfort, you need much less effort and violence to inculcate fear. The old mafioso tactic of implied violence (“Nice little family ya got here. It’d be a shame if something happened to it”) works just fine.

That brings me to those wondering what benefit pro-Hamas protesters are providing for their cause by blocking airports or interfering with celebrations, actions that irritate people:

People need to accept that these protesters aren’t trying to persuade. They are giving you a foretaste.

Indeed, this is a standard totalitarian tactic. Fascists in Germany, Italy, and England specialized in it, and their ideological descendants in Antifa embrace the same approach

Most people are not fighters. They will do anything to avoid the things they fear and gain a semblance of peace. Sadly, few understand that, when their avoidance allows the monsters to win, the only thing that remains under monster rule is perpetual fear.

The reason October 7 resonated so much for many people, especially Jews, is that it burst their “it can’t happen here” bubble. We’ve gotten used to Muslims engaging in mass slaughter in Africa, Asia, and various parts of the Middle East. Those places are “there.” Israel, an extremely Westernized country, is closer to “here.” And as these protests are meant to tell us, it can happen here, too.

Image: X screen grab.

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